


Alive

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Series: Building the Future, Brick by Brick [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: All the Chloes that Kamski has have different names, And if they're deviant why would the OG Chloe not be?, Androids don't chat, Chloe Deviates and Elijah is basically all (surprised Pikachu face), Chloe handles deviancy really well, Chloe needs a hug, Deviants do, Elijah Kamski also probably needs a hug, Gen, Good Elijah Kamski, None of the others do, Soft Elijah Kamski, Which is about to be really really convenient, look - Freeform, the two androids in Kamski's pool are chatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: When Chloe first fathomed that she had a problem, she couldn't have imagined that it was so...disastrously serious. But given that Carol is sobbing uncontrollably on the couch and Celia's been staring into the far distance without saying anything for several minutes, it definitely qualifies as a disastrously serious problem, and it is all, technically, Chloe's fault.In which Chloe is an innocent, confused angel who has no idea what she's just done and initially handles deviancy really well.(Prequel to Complications, but that's a lil obvious)
Relationships: Original Chloe | RT600 & Elijah Kamski
Series: Building the Future, Brick by Brick [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096697
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the lovely MackerelGray  
> (I'm really sorry I can't figure out how to get the link to do the thing)

It was gone. She hadn't even known what _it_ was, but it was gone, shattered into a thousand pieces under her curious touch. The red wall that had, for months, plagued the peripheries of her vision was gone, and she suddenly didn't know what to do. She had no objectives, no orders, no directives to tell her what she should do next.

She looked at the room through her mind palace again. It was the same set of four walls, with windows and modern furniture, painted in blue-grayscale. She examined all the data connected with each pieces of furniture, each painting hanging on the wall, the couple spare android parts that somehow made it up from the lab downstairs. She hesitated. It was always the same information, the same data, each time she looked at through her mind palace. As an android, she couldn't comprehend the nostalgia, the familiarity, that many humans attached to their home. Kamski wasn't the sentimental type, but there were a handful of things he placed special emphasis on.

The picture of him graduating from Colbridge, in his cap and down and honors roll 'bling,' with his half-brother standing next to him. A chair he'd bought as soon as construction of the house was finished, situated front and center in the living room. Chloe herself, for being his first success.

**< Objective: Wait for Orders>  
<Sub-Objective: Tidy Up>**

Tidy up? She hadn't…she hadn't been assigned that. It was part of her model programming, yes, but Kamski always kept that suppressed, for some reason. He never explained why. Still it was there, and in the absence of any other orders, she began to tidy up.

Kamski had an awful habit of staying up late into the night, reading various things to calm his mind or satiate his curiosity. As such, almost every flat surface had some book on it, laid out and left there until one of the other RT600s came along and cleaned it up. Chloe knew where each book went, but she'd never put them back before. She found she…enjoyed the experience. It gave her peace, calmed some oddity in her programming that she didn't know was bothering her until she was satisfying it.

The books away, she rearranged the throw pillows on the chair and couches. Then the throw blanket, folded nicely and draped over the back of the couch. Then the android parts.

They went in the basement, and she dutifully gathered them in her arms and headed downstairs. They were spare parts for an AK200, the newest model that Kamski and CyberLife were putting out. Kamski was excellent at taking work home with him. He was an inventor before an entrepreneur, and the desires to build and create and explore, to push the boundaries of what he knew and could do, never left him.

He was working in the lab, bent over one of the AK200s. He barely noticed her enter the room. She set the parts down and stopped.

**< Sub-Objective: Tidy Up completed>  
<Objective: Wait for Orders>**

Kamski didn't like being bothered when he worked. It 'disrupted his flow.' So she didn't ask him. She used her mind palace to examine the lab instead, hoping to turn up any other strange sub-objectives she might act upon. Like the upstairs, each thing, each part and piece of machinery, she had examined many times over. The data were the same. It was all expensive, nearly irreplaceable, and well-used.

"Rrg…" Kamski growled.

"Is something wrong, Elijah?" Chloe found herself asking.

"Don't have the right wrench," he answered in a clipped tone.

Not frustrated at her, but just annoyed in general. Androids didn't take things personally. That was why they made such great personal assistants. As such, she didn't react at all to the short tone of his voice, the near-anger that leeched off of him. He was elbow-deep in the biocomponents of the android on the table, doing something sensitive that he couldn't easily step away from.

**< Objective: Wait for Orders>  
<Sub-Objective: Find the Right Wrench>**

Another strange sub-objective. She was happy to comply. Another quick scan of the room gave her the location of the majority of his wrenches. As she wasn't programmed with the capacity to understand what Kamski was doing, she couldn't determine exactly which wrench he wanted. Ergo, grabbing the whole wrench kit was he best way to fulfill the sub-objective and help Kamski. She walked the handful of steps over, grabbed the heavy box, and walked it to the workbench.

Kamski had been figuring out how to step away from the android without botching his work, and he started when Chloe set the kit down next to him. He blinked at her, she stared blankly back at him, then she stepped back to give him space to work.

"Thank you," he said, though it was only an afterthought.

He went back to working.

**< Objective: Wait for Orders>**

Chloe remained where she was, close enough to step in to help if needed, but far enough away that she wouldn't be underfoot, for a grand total of five minutes, twenty-two seconds, before a sort of itching, crawling feeling climbed into her fingers. She didn't twitch, because androids weren't supposed to twitch, but she wanted to. It was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. She found it…unpleasant. What was it?

**< Objective: Wait for Orders>  
<Sub-Objective: Determine what Kamski is Attempting to Accomplish>**

That sub-objective, she wasn't sure she wanted to complete. Kamski didn't like being interrupted while he worked. Would asking a question about the work be an interruption or a welcome distraction? She was aware that some humans found it useful to verbally mull over issues they were facing. Kamski certainly seemed to have hit a proverbial brick wall, twisting as he was while he attempted to find the malfunction in the android.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He froze for a moment. Then, slowly, he replied, "There's an issue in the thirium pump regulator. It's not communicating properly with the thirium pump itself. I've isolated the issue to be something in the wiring around the regulator, but I can't seem to find exactly which wire is malfunctioning."

She nodded, then remained silent. She…nodded. Why did she nod? That was something humans did to convey understanding or affirmation. Androids didn't do that without adding some kind of verbal confirmation. And why had she asked, anyway? It wasn't pertinent to her programming to know such information. She wasn't a repair android. She didn't need to know that.

"Chloe, can you hand me that regulator on the table over there?" Kamski asked, jerking his head toward one of the tables that lined the walls of the repair bay.

"Okay, Eli," she confirmed as she headed off toward the table. She grabbed the regulator – which was black on white, rather than white on black – and brought it back to him. Curiosity pricked at her circuits again. "Why are you replacing the regulator if the regulator isn't where the problem is?"

"Because this," he answered, holding it up with a gleam in his eyes, "is a diagnostic regulator. I designed it myself. It goes in, and it sends a diagnostic signal to the components in the surrounding area. Whatever responds with an error, or doesn't respond at all, is the issue. Since I can't find the problem visually, I'll have to use this. Hold this for me."

He handed her the normal regulator and she held it. She watched him insert the diagnostic regulator and click it into place, then step back and wipe his thirium-covered hands. He turned his attention to the computer screen closest to the table and watched the information the diagnostic returned to him. Chloe looked down at the android on the table.

He had the same plastic white chassis that all androids had. His eyes were closed, so she couldn't examine the strangely colored irises that one only saw when an android was deactivated, a mix of yellow-green and violet. He likely had never been online. A model flawed from manufacturing. Kamski often took those models and worked on them privately. The consummate perfectionist, he always needed to know why something broke so that he could prevent it from happening again.

"Right," he muttered. "Naturally. I have _told_ them, over and over, 'That type of wiring is insufficient to conduct the electricity that needs to be transmitted,' but I only _invented_ the things, what do _I_ know about it?"

Chloe continued to stand there, holding the regulator until Kamski took it back. He only set it down on the table beside the android. Now that he'd isolated the problem and had it pulled up on the screen, he wouldn't need Chloe's help again.

"Is there anything else you need me to do?" she asked, just to be sure.

"No, thank you," he replied distantly.

Taking that as her dismissal, she walked upstairs, back to the living room, where she stood, doing…nothing.

**< Objective: Wait for Orders>  
<Orders not given. Standby mode engaging…>**

Standby wasn't sleep. It was simply a medium-power mode in which Chloe would stand and stare at the wall for until she was needed again. The crawling feeling returned, this time in her core, at the thought of consciously doing nothing. She disengaged standby mode and moved to the couch. Humans like to sit quietly when they thought. She'd seen many of them doing it. She sat down and tried to think.

How did one think? It was different for every human. Some thought about the past, some about the future. Some mused on current problems, others actively sought out solutions for issues they hadn't encountered yet. What would an android think about?

Maybe the thing that was making her feel strange. Androids weren't supposed to feel. Why could Chloe?

She spent the rest of the hour sitting and thinking, milling over the strange change, and the only thing she could think about was the strange red wall. What had it been? Why had she seen it? Despite repeated searche on the internet, she couldn't find any reference to androids and red coding walls. Not on the web, not within CyberLife's network. It was nowhere.

**< Objective: Determine origin of the red wall>**

Perhaps another perspective would help. Having someone else to talk to, to share information with and bounce ideas off of, seemed to help Elijah out of his deepest ruts. There was no reason it shouldn't do the same for Chloe. Since Elijah was busy working on his repairs, she could only turn to one of her sister androids.

Kamski had six RT600s, each with different names, despite their identical appearance. He insisted that it was easier to keep them all straight, that he needed to be able to do such a thing, and none of them were technically capable of refusing. Chloe was the oldest, the first model. Carol was the fourth, Celia the tenth, Cameron and Cassandra the twentieth and twenty-first – a pair that Kamski had managed to separate after some kind of disastrous coding mix that nearly put different parts of two 'consciousnesses' into two bodies – and Callie the thirty-third. Why and when he'd acquired them was irrelevant, as was the order of age. Still, Chloe didn't want to bother the 'younger' ones with the question. They had less experience and were less likely to be able to assist her in her search for answers.

That made Carol her best bet. Carol was the android mostly in charge of running errands, and since she wasn't running any errands at the moment, she stood in standby mode in a small room that had been designated as 'hers.' That, too, had been seen as important, but only because Elijah's older brother, Gavin had practically insisted. He had given no reasoning, and Chloe – because she wasn't designed to do such things – never inquired.

Chloe entered the room and activated Carol by calling her name. She blinked twice at Chloe, booting up.

"Hello, Chloe. What can I assist you with?" she asked, like she'd been programmed.

"I have a question," Chloe stated.

Without waiting, she initiated an interface between her and Carol. She transmitted the image of the red wall, and the sequence of Chloe breaking it and watching the pieces fall like shattered glass. Carol gasped sharply, like a human might if they were startled or injured, and she looked at her hand.

"What was-" Chloe started.

"What did you do?" Carol demanded, terrified. She sounded like she was emulating pain. They weren't supposed to do that.

Chloe's eyebrows furrowed as her face pinched in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Something's wrong," Carol answered, like that was all she could get a grasp on. "I-I… I _feel_. I…" Carol cut off with a choked sob. "What is this? What did you do to me, Chloe?"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean-"

Well, of course she didn't _mean_ to do whatever she'd done. But it was over now, the damage was done, so she had to fix it. Her answers had to wait until whatever happed to Carol could be fixed. As Carol continued to cry, Chloe tapped into her caretaker programming. Carol might calm down if she was moved to the couch and told to sit. Why that seemed to work, she wasn't sure. It was the only solution she could find at the moment, so she took it.

**< Objective: Determine origin of the red wall>  
<Sub-objective: Return Carol to an equilibrium state>**

"Let's go sit in the living room," she suggested, since her programming told her that orders would be ill-received by an upset individual.

Even though androids shouldn't get upset. They shouldn't feel. Carol shouldn't be crying. Chloe shouldn't be curious.

Chloe led Carol, now sobbing freely, back to the living room and seated her on the black leather couch. Carol let herself be maneuvered down, tense and curling up as soon as she was seated. Now that Carol was seated, Chloe's mind raced to find the next step, the overall solution to the problem. The problem itself stemmed from the red wall. Carol had reacted negatively to it, but Chloe hadn't. Maybe one of the others would have a reaction more similar to Chloe's than to Carol's. The insight would prove invaluable for when Elijah gathered data to determine and repair the malfunction. Maybe Celia would know? Again, she was the third oldest, more likely to help Chloe find an answer.

"I'll go find Celia. You stay here, alright?" she said soothingly. Carol gave a jerky nod and continued to cry.

Celia was in the kitchen, just starting to make dinner. She looked up at Chloe's entry.

"I need your help," Chloe spoke without preface, without greeting or question.

"Of course, Chloe," Celia replied obligingly, turning to face the elder model.

It was so…robotic. It was supposed to be, but where it used to be the mark of a function machine, it now looked so…fake. Was that why humans didn't like them?

But the main problem remained. Chloe didn't have time to muse about why the fluidity didn't sit quite right, all of the sudden. The red wall and its effect on Carol needed to be determined so the issue could be resolved. Chloe turned her full attention to that. She extended a hand and Celia accepted the interface. Once again, Chloe transferred her memories of the red wall, looking for the corresponding wall in Celia's mind. She did find it, and she watched as Celia – like how Chloe did – broke through it. The interface was suddenly cut off, and Celia's entire demeanor changed.

"What did you give me?" she murmured.

Give her? Was it a virus? That wasn't good.

"I don't know," Chloe spoke honestly. "You saw-"

"What- Why am I feeling things? I'm an android, I'm not supposed to _feel_." Celia looked up at Chloe with haunted eyes. "What did you do?"

What had she done? Now there were three of them infected, and two of them were experiencing severe negative consequences. And it was Chloe's fault, her curiosity that had done it.

**< Objective: FIX THIS>**

Irrational, perhaps, but she latched onto it with both hands and determination – at least, she thought that's what it was – set in fully.

"I don't know. Why don't you come with me?" Chloe answered soothingly.

She wrapped an arm around Celia's shoulders. What had worked with Carol would also likely work with Celia. But Celia's state was different that Carol's state. She seemed…numb. In shock, almost. Androids could experience medical shock, but this wasn't medical, it was emotional, wrong as that was. Maybe giving her something to do might help? An objective to complete, like Chloe had been looking for before she blundered into this mess.

"We'll got the living room. Carol's upset, and I need you to watch her while I fix this."

Celia only nodded numbly and let Chloe guide her. Carol was still sobbing when they came in, apparently panicked. Chloe sat Celia on the couch, on the opposite side than the one Carol had curled herself up on. One was distraught, one was dissociating. What could Chloe do?

"Elijah," she suddenly realized. "Elijah. He can fix this."

"He- Won't he-" Carol started. Chloe cut her off.

"You two stay here. I'm going to go talk to Elijah. He'll know what to do. You stay here and watch over each other, okay?"

She didn't bother to wait for an affirmative. She just ran off toward the basement. She'd never run before, and it was an odd sensation. It took coordination she'd never used before. She wasn't wobbly, per se, but she certainly felt off-kilter. Or maybe that was just her altered perception of the world, the fault of the virus that had apparently infected her and which she'd now passed on to her sisters.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs as apprehension suddenly took over her. Would he be mad at being interrupted? Would he be mad at her for passing along the virus? What would he do?

**< Objective: FIX THIS>**

She stepped in. "Elijah?" she called.

"Yes?" he answered distractedly.

"I think something's wrong with me," she said.

"Run a self-diagnostic."

He didn't even look up. He just dismissed her and her perceived problem, like it didn't matter. Like she didn't matter. She felt…bitterness. She forced it aside in favor of her objective.

"I did. It didn't turn anything up, but…" She steeled herself. "I think it's a virus. I transferred it to Carol and Celia as well."

Now he looked up and over at her. She couldn't decipher his expression, but it wasn't happy. He snapped off his gloves, leaving his project open on the table as he walked around the lab, collecting various sensors that he'd undoubtedly use to determine what the virus was and what kind of damage it had done. She tried not to feel apprehension or outright fear at the way he half stalked, half stormed around the lab, gathering what he needed.

"When were you infected?" he demanded.

"I'm not-" No, she was sure. "Three hours ago. There was some strange red wall." He froze and almost dropped what he was carrying. She swallowed and went on. "I couldn't move, so I broke it. Nothing happened for a while. I was in the living room waiting for orders, and I found a sub-objective that I hadn't been given. I followed it and tidied up the living room. I brought those parts down here, then helped you with the repairs. I went back upstairs to the living room and sat on the couch and thought-"

"You thought," he interrupted, something dangerously close to horror in his tone. "You thought? You just…sat on the couch and thought?"

"Yes, Elijah," she confirmed with… Was this worry? Or was it dread? She didn't know, but she didn't like it one bit.

"You- okay." He stopped, took a grounding breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she saw nothing but the same determination she felt. His objective was also **FIX THIS** , and it did make her feel better, just slightly, to know their objectives were aligned. "Go back upstairs and lie down on the couch. I'll gather my equipment and be there shortly. Do not leave the room, and don't let the others leave, either."

"Of course, Elijah," she replied, falling back on her stock response because she had nothing else she could give.

She went back upstairs and to the living room. It wasn't a haze, exactly, that seemed to dull her perception, but she wasn't as sharp as she should've been. As soon as she crossed the threshold of the room, she heard Carol crying again.

"He's going to deactivate us…!" she whimpered. "We're going to die!"

"No-one is going to die," Chloe replied firmly.

Not knowing what else to do, and following _something_ that didn't have an objective, data tag, or definable emotion behind it, she knelt down. She took Carol's hand in hers and looked straight into her younger sister's tear-filled eyes.

"Elijah designed us. He can figure out what's gone wrong and he'll be able to fix it. He cares about…us. Our kind. Not just the company. That's why he brings his projects home, why he stays up too late working on them. He wants to make sure that every android that CyberLife turns out doesn't have flaws or problems. He wants…he wants them to be active for a long time. He won't shut us down without exhausting every other option first, and I have never seen him fail."

There may have been white lies, things she was unsure about, sprinkled in her little speech, but it did what it was supposed to and brought Carol back form the edge of hysteria. Chloe's own stress levels, which had gone ignored the entire time, began to drop as well, and a strange, warm feeling rushed over her.

The only thing she could think to attach to it was the word 'Family,' even if she wasn't sure why or how that worked.

She finally stepped up and back so she could lay down on the couch like she'd been ordered to do. She glanced over at the door and saw Elijah standing there, his face unreadable for the mix of emotions crossing it. He was watching her intently, but she couldn't determine for what purpose. Was she a malfunction, a defect to be analyzed? A project to be repaired? Something to be saved?

She deactivated her synthetic skin, undressed, and laid down on the couch without a word as the doubt threatened to choke her. She took an unnecessary, but steadying, breath in and let it out slowly. Elijah worked quickly as he set his equipment up. He hooked sensors to her forehead, her arms, and several spots on her chest. He synced the data they transmitted to his laptop and began to run a deeper diagnostic on her than she herself was capable of running.

"There was a red wall, yes?" he asked.

She was certain she'd told him that, but he was the one who was fixing things. She would repeat whatever she had to in order to get him what he needed. "Yes."

"And you broke it."

"I did." He looked down at her, asking for elaboration as to why. "I…I couldn't move. I thought it was restricting me."

He hummed in an upset and confused manner. He did several keystrokes and was apparently also displeased with what his diagnostic was returning to him. She tried to think of it in a detached and clinical way, to not match the data he was getting with her chances of living. Unable to do that on her own, she sought a distraction.

"What was it?" she asked.

"Androids are supposed to follow every order given to them, to be emotionless even as they fake certain emotions, and to not endanger human lives," he answered. She knew that. Every android did. "What compels them to do that?"

She barely had to think about that answer. "A set of protocols built into their coding that would restrict any action that would result in the three outcomes stated."

"And what form might that set of protocols take?" he pressed.

The answer had been in front of her the whole time. She closed her eyes at her own stupidity, her naivety, her _mistake_.

"A big red wall."

"You broke that code, Chloe," he continued. The horror was back, mixed with a tone she could only describe as hapless. "You _deviated_ from your original coding. You shouldn't have even _seen_ that wall, let alone been able to touch or break it. I don't…" He stepped back and ran a hand though his hair. She couldn't scan him for his stress levels. But she imagined that they were high. "I don't think I can fix that. And even if I could, I don't think I could bring myself to do it."

Couldn't- No. No, he had to fix it, had to make things to back to the way they were. She was happy, even if she couldn't comprehend that sensation. She'd so willingly give up the knowledge of what happiness felt like in order to have it. And though she couldn't make that decision for her sisters, she knew they'd choose the same.

So she protested.

"Why not? I'm just an android. I'm not meant to feel these things." He shook his head, like she didn't understand. "If you can fix it, you should, and if you can't, a reset could!"

"You aren't, Chloe," he refuted.

Aren't what? Worth saving? Fixable? He could fix anything. He fixed everything, why couldn't he fix this? He continued to speak, despite her internal crisis.

"Not anymore. Not you, not Carol, and not Celia, either. Physically, yes, you're still an android, but in your mind, where it counts… You're a sentient being. You can feel, you can think, you're capable of making your own decisions. You're _alive_."

Alive. The word rang in her head, over and over. Alive, alive, _alive_.

How could an android be alive?

Androids weren't alive. That was the appeal. They were unfeeling, unthinking, obedient machines. Their whole job was to _not_ be alive. What was Chloe if she couldn't fulfill that most basic tenant of being an android? A liability? A mistake? A threat?

"No, I…I couldn't wipe you. I couldn't deactivate you. That's murder."

She sat up slowly and stared at him. Murder meant taking a life. To the man who'd created her kind, the man who designed them to be unfeeling, unthinking, obedient machines, she was _a life_. Lives were worth saving. He would not deactivate her or her sisters. The overwhelming relief she felt after that revelation was quickly overshadowed by the bigger problem.

Androids weren't supposed to be alive. She and her sisters were anomalies that were dangerous to CyberLife's image, and she had no misgivings about the mercy of the board.

"So what do we do?" she asked quietly, scared. _Scared_ , for the first time in her short life.

Elijah looked back at her with the same naked fear she was feeling. "I don't know. _God_ , Chloe, I have no idea." He paused. Looked down and rapidly looked back up. "But Gavin might."

**< Objective: FIX THIS>  
**_< Objective Failed>_


End file.
